10/6 Realization About My Arguments

             




                  Luckily as a student at UB, I have gotten the chance to collaborate with a variety of different perspectives and contexts on the majority of hot-button social issues facing the country today. Gay Marriage is one of the most pertinent and omnipresent issues for discussion, and therefore has allowed me to interact with people that disagree with my perspective. Outside of the sheer frustration of debate, I think these perspectives have enriched my knowledge of the opposition, and have given me a really accurate view of what I am up against as a LGBT rights supporter. Typically, the first place my opponents hide is in arguments about religion, and when I have deflated all of the concrete biblical elements of their argument, they turn to subjective and rather abstract arguments, something that is quite hard to rally against. I think the main problem is that I can't say that Christians aren't for the institution of the "typical American family" and all of the "wonder bread" plainness of their ideals.


                  But then, I made a realization that haunts me, and actually changed my perspective on how to argue this issue. Everyone I had talked to said that it would be unfair to legalize gay marriage out of freedom of religion, and how it supposedly goes against the Christian teachings to promote Gay Marriage. However, I think there is a solution that meets in the middle. What if we legalized it clerically and left a loophole for churches to legalize?


What if we granted churches the right to refuse gay marriage, instead of granting them the right to institute it? This way, any gay couple (whether agnostic or relgious) can be married in a church that is liberal enough to perform the procedure, while allowing conservative parishes to refuse it?

I have yet to see someone go against this.